Preview Reading for Mothers & Strangers October 24th!

Exciting Day, Wednesday October 24: Our Preview Reading for Mothers & Strangers!
Raleigh Television News will be filming the entire event, Noon to 1 pm.
At Block Gallery, 222 Hargett St, Raleigh downtown.
Reading with me is a high-powered roster in the ranks of Southern literature: best-selling novelists Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle, Jaki Shelton Greene, Lynden Harris, Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Belle Boggs, Margaret Rich. Barbara Tyroler photographed me, see below, for the concurrent exhibition along with five other authors, and Elizabeth Matheson photographed three others.

Mothers, Daughters and the Writing Life Artists Reception at Block Gallery, Raleigh

The opening night of the photography exhibition on October 6 was a notable success, with the photographers Barbara Tyroler and Elizabeth Matheson; Raleigh Arts Curator Stacy Bloom-Rexrode, and several of the writers featured in the photos, including Jill McCorkle, Margaret Rich, Lynden Harris, and myself; as well as several writers from our anthology, Mothers and Strangers, who were not featured in the exhibition. So gratifying to see the success of an idea that Barbara Tyroler and I conceived months ago!

The Origin Story

Two years ago almost to the day, my friend Margaret Rich emailed to tell me her mother had just passed away in Greenville, SC, and I wrote back to tell her that my mother had just passed away on the same day in Cairo, Egypt, and that I was at the airport on my way there. Of that strange  coincidence was conceived the idea for this book, and with Lee Smith instantly and enthusiastically involved, it saw the light of day. So today is a day of bittersweet remembrance, as well as gratitude for good friends.
In remembrance, here is a black and white photo of my mother on her wedding day, as I believe she would best want to be remembered.

Who Wears a Mask?

Photo www.barbaratyroler.com

I'm comfortable with masks. You have to be, when your past and present are irreconcilable, when you straddle different worlds, constantly calibrating language and body language, treading the tightrope of mannerisms and mores, as you segue from one to the other. It becomes second nature, and there is no hypocrisy involved, only the universal imperative to make others comfortable. You yourself are always comfortable in your skin, as the French say, "bien dans sa peau," only you have more than one skin to slip into.
But isn't it true of everyone to some extent, that as we play our many roles in life, child and parent, lover and colleague, we don subtly different masks?
In the photo above, a fragment of gold-thread embroidered velvet overlays my face like a mask. The fabric comes from my grandmother, and was used in her day to wrap fresh linens. I've framed a section of it on a wall in my home in North Carolina, where it hangs, a little incongruous perhaps, but comfortable in its own skin, so to speak.

Photo Exhibit Poster Up!

Excited to see the poster and flyers for this photo exhibit, in which I am one of seven writers photographed in conjunction with the anthology I edited, Mothers & Strangers, to be published early spring 2019.

Women, Writers, and Images

I am thrilled to be one of seven women writers photographed for an exhibition, Mothers, Daughters & the Writing Life, on display at Block Gallery in Raleigh September through November 2018. The photographers are Barbara Tyroler, who made the stylized portrait below of me on my website, and Elizabeth Maatheson. I will be in illustrious company: Jaki Shelton Green, NC Poet Laureate, Frances Mayes, best-selling author of Under the Tuscan Sun, Jill McCorkle, and more. especially gratifying: the exhibition was inspired by the anthology I co-edited, with Lee Smith as my co-editor, Mothers & Strangers, a collection of essays on motherhood by 28 celebrated Southern writers.

Photo by Barbara Tyroler.

Honored to be among top ten Arab American women writers

http://www.arabamerica.com/10-
remarkable-women-in-arab-american-prose/
https://www.arabamerica.com/10-remarkable-women-in-arab-american-prose/

Deep Sahara: a deeply intriguing and disturbing read.

Deep Sahara, the second novel by Leslie Croxford, starts as a deep drive into one man’s psyche, his memories and the loss that grieves him, and then opens up and evolves into a thriller with a breathtaking twist of international dimensions. When the protagonist takes refuge in a monastery deep in the Algerian Sahara to come to terms with his bereavement, he stumbles across the horrific mass slaughter of the resident monks. Surprisingly, he decides to stay on, alone, at the monastery, in complete desert isolation, until the mirage-like appearance of an American woman, and the disturbing observation of genetically defective insect life, lead him down a dangerous path to unmask a global plot. Without spoiling the surprise twists and turns, suffice it to say that the action moves from Alexandria to Algeria to Rome to Germany to the United States. What sets Croxford novel apart is the quality of the writing, the minuteness of the observation, and the moral ambiguity that recalls the best of John Le Carré.

Trump, Rigged Elections, and the Muslim Brotherhood

Listening to Donald Trump whip up his supporters with warnings about rigged elections and a rigged system, and hearing him threaten that mayhem might ensue if he does not win, evokes a shocking sense of deja vu. But not in America. In Egypt. 

When Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood was running for the first contested presidential election in Egypt, a year after the January 25 revolution, he also claimed that the elections would be rigged against him, and that the entire system of the deep state was rigged against him, and that his supporters would "set fire to the country" if he did not win. Given the history of Egyptian elections, Morsi, arguably, could make a more plausible case than Donald Trump. 

But Trump echoes Morsi in even more unsettling ways. The Muslim Brotherhood leader also fed  the anger, frustration and fear of his base and validated their sense of economic and political disenfranchisement in a country ruled by cosmopolitan elites. Morsi, like Trump, was clearly unqualified and inexperienced to govern, but made a virtue of being an "outsider" against an ultimate insider opponent. Like Trump, he warned of dark conspiracies and declared he could trust no one but his own "people." And crucially, like Trump, he appealed to xenophobia and  religious bigotry against minorities. 

Morsi won, narrowly. Some put it down to the protest vote. A significant proportion of those who voted for him could not abide his Muslim Brotherhood but also could not bring themselves to vote for his opponent, a military establishment figure who represented the Mubarak ancien regime on steroids- it would have meant repudiating the revolution they fought for. Another significant proportion could not bring themselves to vote for either candidate and stayed home. 

Morsi won, but the backlash from his supporters came anyway, a year later, when a million people went into the streets to demand the removal of his inept and autocratic government, and the military responded with a coup. Morsi diehards felt robbed of their "democratically elected" president and were encouraged by the Muslim Brotherhood leaders to occupy a major square in Cairo and camp out there in protest, by the thousands, men, women, and children, for several months, Waco style. It  took a bloody confrontation with the forces of order to root them out: a thousand Morsi supporters perished.

That could never happen in America. But then again, this entire election campaign year could never happen, except that it just did. Foreign observers offering to supervise the legitimacy of US elections is only the latest outrage dragging America down into banana republic territory. Could a protest vote against an establishment figure bring about a default victory for a racist, bigoted, unqualified showman? And if he lost, could he bear to be a "loser" or would he try to blame rigged elections and encourage his supporters to sow mayhem?